


i’ll be up to watch the world around us live and die

by plinys



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-29
Updated: 2017-06-29
Packaged: 2018-11-21 06:44:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11352024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: Mick at the end of the world.





	i’ll be up to watch the world around us live and die

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sinceresapphire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinceresapphire/gifts).



> For a fic swap, this is like just angst I am so sorry wow.

“The end of the world. Beautiful isn’t it?”

Mick doesn’t answer the question. 

Just tips back the rest of the beer in his hand, replicated not real, they haven’t made anything this real in centuries. It doesn’t taste quite right, burns on the way down in a way that it shouldn’t, takes more to make the world stop hurting. 

The end of world. The moment that was always coming, inevitable yet too far away for any normal person to have ever fathomed. Certainly, he had never thought he would make it this far, that time would end, and he would be still around to feel it, to see it with his very own eyes. 

And yet here he is.

Here they are.

He does not turn his head, because if he does, the image will fade, the familiar presence that has lingered there in his mind after all these years will disappear.

The Time Master’s couldn’t remove all traces of him from Mick’s mind, and yet he knows with certainty, if he looks anywhere other than the viewport showing the end of the earth below him, that his mind will remember what’s real and what’s not. 

He’s forgotten how old he is, forgot how to know, forty had turned into four hundred years trapped in the time stream moving back and forth and not even knowing who he was, crossing his timeline so many times that there wasn’t many safe places left for him to go.

Nowhere to settle.

Nowhere to rest his head.

Nowhere to call home.

Nowhere to belong to.

No one. 

Not anymore. 

The jumpship is awash in a steady blue light, warming and comforting, the closest thing to fire that he can manage in a confined space. He doesn’t need fire, not anymore, the Time Master’s stole that need from him when they rewrote his mind for the tenth time. But the blue light that emits from his ever present ghost, seems to pull on those old familiar desires and he feels it like sparks across his finger tips.

Compared to that, the end of the world was nothing. 

His world had ended long ago. 

“It’s nothing special.”

There’s a sort of non-committal halfnoise, a familiar one.

Of course, it has to be familiar.

He’s playing make a memory of times he’s heard that noise before. Sitting in one of their safe houses, a disagreement with no real heat.

It’s there inside of his head.

This is all inside of his head.

A hallucination. 

Though he supposed a hallucination was better than the alternative, than the man he had met in a battle field, a shell of the man Mick had known since he was sixteen years old. 

“Why stay here and watch the world end?”

He shrugs. 

“Why not?”

“Go back to the team,” his hallucination says, voicing the traitorous thoughts in his own head. 

“The team,” Mick echoes, “They don’t need me anymore. Don’t want me. Not much of a team anyways not now.” 

This is a truth he’s long since acknowledged. 

With the team scattered apart following their accidental breaking of time. Everyone moving on and moving off, while Mick was left behind. 

The only reason he stayed around in the first place. was out of loyalty to Len’s memory. Len had wanted to go with them. He had been the one that died a hero. The one that Rip had wanted in the first place, while Mick was … Mick was just his partner.

Until he suddenly wasn’t anymore.

Until everything went wrong.

Until he wasn’t even  _ Mick  _ anymore. 

And even when he came back things never got put back together right. They’d assumed that there would be time to fix things when it was all said and done. They would have gone back to Central City, back where they belonged, and fix things.

Together.

Central City had always belonged to Len.

But when he was with Len, it might have just belonged to Mick too.

Just for a moment. 

“Mick, you need to leave.” 

“Too late for that,” he says.

As if right on cue, there’s a burst of light.

Fire.

Warmth.

A star exploding.

A supernova.

The end of the world coming at long last.

The destruction glorious, and yet somehow, not enough.

Nothing ever seems to be enough anymore. 

He needs another beer. He needs to brace himself for the inevitable end. He needs to let the fire of a burning star wash him away the same way Len had let the Oculus consume him. It was fitting. 

Fire was always meant to be his end. 

He should have died before in that warehouse, left behind, left for dead. If he had maybe they wouldn’t have ended up here, wouldn’t have ended up like this. 

Alone.

Watching the world end.

“You’re not alone.”

“You’re not real,” Mick says, because he wasn’t. 

Despite the blue light that filled the jumpship. 

Despite the ghost of a touch that seemed to linger on his skin.

Despite the way his heart ached to admit it. 

Despite the jumpship moving without him taking control, without him giving the command. 

“You’re not real,” he says, a reassurance to himself. 

Because he doesn’t know how to handle the alternative. 

Doesn’t know how to explain what it means, when the ship jolts forward away from the end of the universe, away from the end he’s chosen from himself, and back into the time stream. 

And yet.

Here he is.

Not dead.

Not at the end of the world.

Not alone.

“Destination,” the computer asks. 

“Aruba, 2017.” 

 


End file.
